Former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf has said that it is possible that rogue members of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the military knew of Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Abbottabad.

“As a policy, the army and the ISI are fighting terrorism and extremism, al Qaeda and the Taliban. But rogue elements within are a possibility,” Musharraf said in an interview with ABC News Chief Law and Justice Correspondent Chris Cuomo.

Parliamentarians were stunned on Tuesday when a lawmaker led prayers for al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, defying calls from Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi that he needed permission to do so.

At the National Assembly session, Maulvi Asmatullah, an independent candidate from NA-264 stood up and said Bin Laden had reportedly been given funeral services by the Americans and “we should pray for him”.

The prayer service hardly lasted a minute in which two JUI-F legislators from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, former federal minister Attaur Rehman and Laiq Muhammad Khan, participated.

In a sense, he is the Pakistan version of Harun Yahya, the Turkish creationist and one-man marketing machine. Like Yahya, Hamid has his share of enemies and legal troubles; like Yahya, the sources of his funding and backing are rumoured to have an agenda; like Yahya, he often romanticises the past in the face of a changed contemporary context.

That is where the similarities end, however. Where Harun Yahya is on a crusade against Darwinism and evolutionary biology, pitting religion against science, Zaid Hamid’s vision is a martial, conquering, unified Pakistan.

“A lawmaker led a prayer for Al-qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in Parliament…”
Isn’t it time Pakistan dropped the pretense? At least then, there might be secret funds available to it from other sympathetic nations. Right now, this fence-sitting has earned it the worst of both worlds.